Arthrology in Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's Watchmen: Chapter 1

In Chapter 1 of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's Watchmen, arthrology - a concept elaborated on by Thierry Groensteen in The System of Comics - is used as a thematic bridge between the beginning and end of the issue (37 words). The very first page of the issue is the comic equivalent of a filmic zoom-out, with the first panel depicting the Comedian's blood-stained smiley-face badge and each successive panel on the page getting further and further away until the reader is brought to the level of the apartment building where Edward Blake (the Comedian) was thrown from.  As this happens, the reader is subjected to Rorschach's journal entry for October 12th, 1985, in which he philosophically laments over the destitute state of the world around him and the possible annihilation that Earth would face in a nuclear war (135 words). The last page of the issue does the same thing, except the Comedian's badge is not blood-stained, and the setting has been changed to the top of a restaurant, a peaceful setting compared to the site of the Comedian's demise, as the reader follows along in a casual conversation between Dan Dreiberg and Laurie Juspeczyk wherein they speak of things that happened in the past, a contrast to the philosophical, forward-looking nature of Rorschach's journal entry, yet the conversation still has an uncomfortable air as Dan and Laurie talk about death (225 words). The arthrological connection between these different settings serves to connote an atmosphere of foreboding and impending doom from the threat of nuclear annihilation (as well as foreshadowing Ozymandias's plans); this atmosphere is further enhanced by the fact that both Rorschach's journal entry and Dan and Laurie's conversation discuss death in some way or another (279 words).

Watchmen, Chapter 1, p. 1.

Furthermore, the last panel of the first page and the penultimate panel of the last page both end their zoom-outs from the Comedian's badge with a larger panel compared to the respective pages' previous panels; the last panel of the first page takes up an entire tier while the penultimate panel of the last page takes two and a half panels' worth of spaces in its own tier (with the very last panel of the last page being a quote from Bob Dylan and a depiction of the Doomsday Clock that is featured prominently throughout the book) (376 words). As well, both of these larger panels have a single word balloon that conveys a short notion about the Comedian's death; in the last panel of the first page, the featured detective remarks about the fall that Edward Blake took, while Dan says, "The Comedian is dead" (p. 26, panel 7); these short remarks from these final panels acts as a counterpoint to the abundance of words featured in the preceding panels of the first and last pages, which serves to connote the sense of futility that runs throughout the book (467 words).

In conclusion, the arthrological connection between the first and last pages of Watchmen's first chapter, which is in their panel grid layouts, effectively serves the narrative and thematic purposes of these two pages (500 words).

Watchmen, Chapter 1, p. 26. 

-Daniel Piatkowski.